


Just Tell Me Where To Begin

by andhopeto



Series: the devil wants to know [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cis Girl!Derek, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andhopeto/pseuds/andhopeto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't get to be Lydia's knight in shining armor, but he does get to deal with Dereka's scowls and sour attitude on an increasingly regular basis. He's not sure it's a fair trade-off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Tell Me Where To Begin

**Author's Note:**

> Stories in this series are connected by theme, not by the story told within. Each story can be read independently of one another as they are not set in the same continuity.

Stiles  _knows_  that he has no chance with Lydia, Fifteen Year Plan or not. He knows this the same way he knows that Dereka manages to equally frighten and excite him-- in a way that he is steadfastly ignoring.

Lydia is everything he's every wanted. She is gorgeous, yes, but she is also so, so smart, and sometimes he thinks he's the only one who sees it. She is smart and funny and there isn't anything he wouldn't do to see her smile and mean it. Lydia is just as good at smiling when she doesn't mean it as she is at everything else. But Stiles notices the difference.

Lydia is the girl of his childhood dreams. But just as he knows how she takes her coffee and prefers fruity perfumes over floral ones, he knows that she's already in love with someone else. And not just that, but she will  _never_  fall in love with Stiles.

Stiles isn't the charming hero, or the dashing knight with a curse cast upon him. He's the plucky sidekick who does all the research on how to defeat the evil wizard, and then gets the crap kicked out of him for all his effort. The sidekick doesn't get the girl. He gets to sit in the background and watch everyone else around him fall in love while he stays focused on saving all their asses.

He knows this, but he can't bring himself to stop trying to win Lydia over. Even after she brought Jackson back to himself, even after he watched everything fall apart in front of him in that warehouse, he can't stop trying.

Which is why he's standing on the side of the road at two in the morning next to his Jeep, which has cruelly, utterly betrayed him by stalling in the middle of nowhere.

Lydia had called him half an hour ago, drunk and giggling into the phone. Stiles had been half-convinced he was still asleep when she asked him to pick her up from a party, because Jackson wasn't answering his phone, and Allison was even more drunk than she was, and her mom was going to kill her if she wasn't home by three. So Stiles, determined to be her knight riding his trusty steed, or rather, his usually trusty Jeep, had driven off to her rescue. And his baby was letting him down.

His phone beeps at him and he fumbles it out from his pocket to check his texts.

_flse alrm jacksns here now thx neway!_

Of. Course. How could he forget? He isn't her knight. Jackson is.

Stiles kicks the passenger-side front tire on his jeep in frustration. And immediately feels bad for it.

"I'm sorry, baby," he says pitifully, stroking a hand over the hood. "It's not your fault. I should have taken you in to get checked over weeks ago."

"Do you make it a habit of talking to your car?"

"Oh holy god, what!" Stiles yelps, pivoting around to see Dereka,  _fucking Dereka, of course, what could make this night even better?_ , lurking from the edge of the tree line. "Do you make it a habit of scaring the crap out of stranded motorists in the middle of the night?"

She ignores him, walking around the jeep to open the door and pop the hood.

"Do you even know what you're doing?" Stiles doesn't really care if she does or not, it would just be nice to know if she's going to do more harm than good in there. Not that he would stop her if she's screwing up the insides of his baby, what with the whole  _Dereka is terrifying_  thing.

She doesn't ignore him this time, but her response is somewhere between a grunt and a growl, and wow, he should really not find that as hot as he does.

"When's the last time you took this thing to a mechanic?" She doesn't even bother to look at him when she asks.

"Uh, let me think. That would be the time I was paralyzed and had to see a giant lizard monster murder a guy in front of me. That sort of thing kind of puts a guy off from his routine oil change."

Dereka closes the hood of the jeep and rubs her hands together as though she were trying to get rid of the feeling of dust and grime. Stiles thinks about being offended for a moment, but, really, it probably was pretty bad in there. Then again, Dereka used to live in the  _burnt-out remains_  of her childhood home, so, okay, no, he was definitely a little offended.

"It should get you home now, but call a mechanic tomorrow. You never know what you'll run into the next time it breaks down."

He stares agog for a moment before he realizes she's not teasing him. Of course she isn't. This is  _Dereka_.

"Care to share with the rest of the class what you're clearly not telling me?"

She doesn't roll her eyes, but it looks like she wants to. "Other werewolves in the area."

"Oh, that's real helpful," he says, a whine developing in his tone. "And how long have you known about this?" The, ' _and not told me or Scott_ ' goes unsaid, but understood.

"A while. I'm staying on top of it." She looks annoyed that he's questioning her  _sorely lacking_  leadership skills. Not that he wants her to lead  _him_  or anything, but it's the principle of the matter.

But then she's in his face, crowding him until his back is up against the side of his jeep. She's tall, almost level with him, but that doesn't matter much. Dereka could be five foot nothing and still manage to intimidate him. Not that he's intimidated. No. Not at all.

"There won't be a problem if you  _get your car fixed_  and stop standing at the edge of the forest in the middle of the night looking like a lost baby deer."

"Fawn," he says without thinking. She looks at him like he's lost his mind, which is a distinct possibility, considering how close she's standing to him. "A baby deer is called a fawn."

"I know what they're called. Now  _go home_  and  _stay there_."

"Aw, are you worried about my safety? Look at you. You are! I'm impressed. You're clearly growing as a perso--!" Yeah. He's definitely lost his mind, he thinks as Dereka's hand wraps around his throat, knocking his head into his jeep none-too-kindly.

"I don't have time to waste saving your sorry ass just because you can't keep out of trouble for five minutes." She lets him go, but she's still crowding his personal space, which is doing all sorts of things to him that he'd rather not dwell on.

But then she makes a face and sniffs the air.

"You have  _got_  to be kidding me," she groans in a tone of disgusted disbelief, and backs away from him.

"What?" he asks.

The rise of her eyebrows doesn't tell him much, but then her gaze flicks down to his crotch and that's telling him all he needs to know.

"Natural reaction! I'm sixteen! It's nothing personal!"

She doesn't even bother to respond to his flimsy excuses for his highly inappropriate boner, and instead turns around and disappears into the trees.

It isn't until he's managed to start the jeep and is half a mile down the road that he realizes that he never thanked her for the patch job on his baby.

 

It's two more days until he gets the chance to show his appreciation. Dereka shows up in his bedroom window, the glare of red eyes scaring him into a strangled-off scream of terror. A  _manly_  scream of terror, of course, but it was still a scream.

"Holy god," he says as he opens the window, "don't  _do_  that!" The look she gives him has him thinking she might have a sense of humor somewhere in her blackened soul.

"Next time I'll just let myself in." Dereka closes the window behind her and stands in front of it like a hot-chick version of a guard dog.

"That was so not what I meant," Stiles mutters under his breath, but figures that asking her to use the doorbell when his dad isn't home would be a lost cause. "Oh, hey, I got you something."

Stiles grabs a plastic-wrapped air freshener off his bookshelf and holds it out. Dereka stares at it like she might catch a disease from his hand.

"What." It's not a question.

"When I took my jeep to the auto shop, I saw this and thought of you." He's pretty sure that this was a terrible idea, but Stiles was nothing if not committed to following through on a plan.

She takes the air freshener and looks at the label.

"Great for eliminating pet odors?"

Stiles is smiling his best 'please don't maim and/or kill me' smile.

"You're a dick," she says bluntly, but there's the barest hint of a smile at the corners of her lips, and she tucks the air freshener into a pocket of her leather jacket, so Stiles is totally counting this as an epic win.

"So, not to imply that I don't want you here, even though I don't, what are you doing in my bedroom?"

"I came to make sure you got your car fixed." She's looking around his room, fingertips trailing down book spines and eyes checking out the ceramic skull on top of one of his shelves.

"In the shop as we speak," he says, sitting himself down into his desk chair, leg bouncing of its own accord. "Anything else?"

She's acting way too cagey for that to have been all. She could have easily gotten confirmation of it using her creepy stalker superpowers, rather than scaring the crap out of him and crawling in through his bedroom window in the middle of the night.

"There's a pack of alpha werewolves in the area. I don't know what they're doing here or if they plan to stick around, but until I know more, you and Scott should stick together. I know that's like asking water to be wet, but I thought better safe than sorry."

"Wow." Stiles nods appreciatively. "That was a lot of words. Is your throat parched? Do you need something to drink after that speech?"

Dereka's lips purse together. "Is everything a joke to you?"

"Yeah, yeah, mortal danger, big bad in town, try not to die. I think I've got this down by now. It's better to laugh about it than curl up in a ball and cry about how easily I can find myself being brutally murdered before I graduate high school."

Stiles doesn't know how to interpret the look she gives him at this overshare, but he's left with that image swimming behind his eyelids for the rest of the night. Better that than the shape of her ass as she climbed back out through the window as she left.

**Author's Note:**

> Story and series titles are from Fiona Apple's song, 'Criminal'.
> 
>  
> 
> ...There may or may not be a porny sequel to this story at a later date.


End file.
